Jan Kubis

Jan Kubis (24 June 1913-18 June 1942) was a Staff Sergeant of the Czechoslovakian army who was one of the leaders of Operation Anthropoid during World War II.

Biography
Jan Kubis was born in Dolni Vilemovice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Czech Republic) on 24 June 1913, and he joined the Czechoslovakian military in 1935. In 1938, he became a deputy platoon commander in the Opava area, and he worked at a brick factory before fleeing the country in June 1939 and becoming an officer in the Czechoslovakian army-in-exile. Kubis was trained as a paratrooper in the United Kingdom, and Kubis and Jozef Gabcik were dropped into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in December 1941 so that they could link up with the Czechoslovak Resistance and assassinate the acting Nazi governor, Reinhard Heydrich. Kubis began a romantic relationship with Marie Kovarnikova, who initially pretended to be his girlfriend to make him seem less suspicious; they later claimed that they were engaged to marry. In May 1942, Kubis took part in Operation Anthropoid, despite having a fear of killing people. Kubis mortally wounded Heydrich with an anti-tank grenade near the Prague tram station, and the parachutists fled to the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius. On 18 June, they were besieged by German SS soldiers in the church, and he was mortally wounded, dying in a hospital. 24 of his relatives, including his father, his siblings and their spouses, his cousins, aunts, and uncles, were executed at the Mauthausen concentration camp in a series of reprisal murders.